Now, Israeli analysts not only fear a resurgent Syria but also worry that since Erdogan has Trump's ear on Syrian policy, he will be emboldened. Turkey, after all, backed the rebel group that has now taken power and is their main international sponsor. Turkish fighter jets are already operating in northern Syrian air space, and Israel's attempt to establish hegemony over its southern regions is endangered by Turkish claims that, going back to Ottoman times, Syria has always been in its sphere of influence.
Iran: No Nuclear Dust
Trump also sidelined Netanyahu during his trip by continuing to press for a new nuclear deal with Iran. His Gulf Arab hosts showed a collective enthusiasm for the ongoing talks and Trump revealed that Qatar's ruler, Tamim Bin Hamad Al Thani, had indeed lobbied him to begin direct discussions with Iran. The Gulf Arab monarchies fear being caught in the crossfire of any future American-Israeli war with Iran. The leaders of Qatar and the other Gulf states are anxious that the (all too literal) fallout from any aerial strikes on enriched nuclear materials in Iran could drift onto their populations, affecting their water supplies. Trump tried to reassure his hosts that "we're not going to be making any nuclear dust in Iran," adding that he wanted to try negotiations first in hopes of forestalling any such outcome.
During both the first Trump administration and the Biden administration, Washington's pitch to the Gulf Arab states was that they should recognize Israel, do business with it, and form a military alliance with it against Iran. Jared Kushner succeeded in making this argument to the postage-stamp Gulf countries of the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain, which signed the Abraham Accords with Israel on September 15, 2020.
However, Kushner and then-President Biden failed to bring Saudi Arabia aboard. Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman resisted going on a war footing with Iran, especially after the devastating 2019 attack by that country or one of its proxies on the Kingdom's Abqaiq refinery, which underlined Riyadh's vulnerability. Not surprisingly, then, in March 2023, the Saudi foreign minister joined his Iranian counterpart in Beijing, where the two countries restored diplomatic relations and began deconfliction talks.
Once Israel launched its total war on the Gazan population in October 2023, bin Salman could hardly sign on to the Abraham Accords. In the region, it would have looked as if he were helping to destroy the Palestinian Arabs while putting a target on Iran, one of the Palestinians' few remaining state champions. Unlike Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia has a substantial citizen population -- some 19 million people -- whose opinions the government has to be at least a little bit anxious about, especially since the blood of the average Saudi is indeed boiling at the daily atrocities being committed by Israel in Gaza. Last year, bin Salman's office leaked to Politico that he feared he would be assassinated if he recognized Israel under such grim circumstances and he insisted on the need for an independent Palestinian state (which seemed to get Washington off his back on the issue).
In addition, Trump appears to have developed the same fascination that possessed Barack Obama when it comes to "opening" Iran the way Richard Nixon once opened China. Nothing, of course, could be more unwelcome in Tel Aviv. Netanyahu has repeatedly threatened to attack Iran's civilian nuclear enrichment facilities (though Western intelligence agencies do not believe that country actually has a nuclear weapons program). In an April meeting, Trump informed Netanyahu that he wanted to try negotiations before anybody attacked Iran and pointedly gave the prime minister a copy of his book The Art of the Deal.
Qatar: A Fundamental Role
If Qatar did convince Trump to try negotiating with Iran, then Sheikh Tamim won a major round in the contest for influence with the American president. It was a victory in keeping with Doha's longstanding regional role as a mediator and seeker of peaceful solutions to conflict. And the rise of Qatari influence is another blow to Netanyahu, who has attempted to sideline the Gulf gas giant even though he was happy to make use of its services.
Since Hamas's bloodthirsty October 7, 2023, attack on Israel, elements of the Israeli government and its supporters have attempted to blame Qatar for supposedly supporting and bankrolling Hamas. The allegations are breathtakingly false and serve as a smokescreen for Hamas's actual patron (in a manner of speaking), Netanyahu himself. They were aimed, however, precisely at turning Qatar into a distrusted regional pariah, a ploy that has so far failed spectacularly.
That the fundamentalist Hamas movement came to power at the ballot box in Gaza in 2006 and could not be dislodged struck Netanyahu as a potential blessing. The bad blood between Hamas in Gaza and the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) on the West Bank left Palestinians politically divided. Netanyahu made that very rivalry a pretext for preventing the establishment of a state for the five million stateless Palestinians under Israeli occupation. He put severe import-export restrictions on Gaza but otherwise allowed Hamas to run it as its own fiefdom. Hamas rocket fire from time to time (which seldom did any real damage) was a price Netanyahu was then willing to pay. He had a close associate act as a go-between regarding transfers of money from Qatar and Egypt into Gaza for civilian aid and administration. From 2021 on, Egypt and Qatar deposited aid money for Gaza civilian reconstruction in an Israeli bank account, and then Israel transferred it to the Gazans.
That's right: Bibi Netanyahu was once functionally Gaza's comptroller. Moreover, in 2011-2012, the Obama administration asked Qatar to host members of the Hamas civilian politbureau so that they could take part in indirect negotiations with both the U.S. and Israel. The favor Qatar did for Washington and Tel Aviv, however, would prove burdensome to its diplomacy. In 2018, the emir of Qatar, Sheikh Tamim, grew so frustrated with Hamas that he decided to kick its officials out and cease sending aid to Gaza. Terrified that his divide-and-rule approach to the Palestinians might be jeopardized, Netanyahu frantically dispatched the head of the Israeli intelligence outfit Mossad to Qatar to plead with the emir to continue the arrangement.
In 2020, The Times of Israel revealed that Mossad head Yossi Cohen had written a letter to Tamim about the Gaza money transfers, saying: "This aid has undoubtedly played a fundamental role in achieving the continued improvement of the humanitarian situation in the Gaza Strip and ensuring stability and security in the region." As late as 2023, other Israeli government officials were still sending similar messages, according to that paper. The subsequent attempt of the Netanyahu government to shift blame for its disgraceful Gaza policy onto Qatar has struck few seasoned observers as plausible.
Regarding Trump's recent visit, the Israeli genocide in Gaza was the one outstanding issue on which Gulf leaders appear to have made little headway. After a roundtable with Qatari business leaders, the president said of Gaza, "Let the United States get involved and make it just a freedom zone." These remarks, wholly detached from reality, did not clarify whether he still agreed with Netanyahu on a plan to ethnically cleanse the Gaza Strip, which no one in the Arab Gulf could accept. In any case, insiders say Trump is frustrated that Netanyahu doesn't "wrap up" the war, but that the president has not exerted the pressure necessary to stop it.
A Stark Pivot
Trump's foreign policy trip marked a stark pivot away from what had long been a neoconservative version of Middle Eastern policymaking in Washington. In the era of President George W. Bush, some officials typically argued that Israel was Washington's only reliable democratic partner in the Middle East and that all policy in the region should be organized around that reality. In the process, of course, they downplayed the plight of the Palestinians, claiming in 2002 that peace would only come in the region when the Iraqi government of Saddam Hussein was overthrown. They gradually developed a rhetoric for stuffing Washington's version of democracy down the gullets of Middle Eastern regimes -- at the point of a gun, if necessary. They either marginalized Arab regimes or sought to scare them into an alliance with Israel. Their ultimate goal then was a war on Iran that would overthrow the government there. "Everyone wants to go to Baghdad. Real men want to go to Tehran," they used to proclaim in a creepy combination of male chauvinism and juvenile jingoism.
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